I've always remembered the sensational tabloid headline I saw when I was a boy: "Woman gives birth to 17 baby rabbits!"

​Absurd. Untrue.

But when a rabbit gives birth to baby rabbits, the effect is both sensational and TRUE. Hairless pink bodies arrived in Theodora's nest box this morning--we weren't even sure she was pregnant.

Right now we aren't supposed to touch the tiny creatures, but I can only think of velvety skin, a thin membrane keeping the outside out and the insides in . . . of the pulse of a tiny heart beating just beneath the surface . . . of warm life quivering beneath my giant fingers.

I don't know how many rabbits there are, but God knows--and He made each fragile, persistent life for a purpose.

Peering through the leaves at the evening sun. The framework--call it perspective--we have, makes all the difference.

When we look at an impossible situation do we see the insurmountable obstacle or one more mountain for God to cast into the sea?

​When we follow our path toward obscure and painful valleys do we see the darkness or the Shepherd who is leading us through?

When we love people who profess to care but who hurt us anyway do we see our injury or something of what we've been to God--do we catch a glimpse of what it meant for him to love us when we despised Him?

The impossibility, the darkness, and the injury are real--it's denial to say less--but if our focus is on God, everything changes.

8:30 p.m. in Ferndale and the sun is far from going down. We could work outside in the twilight at 10 and we could start again at 4 in the morning. If we had the strength, we'd have the light.

But it's far from the longest day. In Alaska, I'm told, the sun never sets. People find themselves working all hours without even thinking about it because it doesn't dawn on them that they need to go to bed.

But even the unending days in Alaska are nothing compared to the longest day. To tell us about that day, we have to use measurements greater than ordinary twenty-four hour periods: One day is like a thousand years to God. And a thousand years? They're like a single day to Him, we're told.

I suppose that only makes sense since God Himself is the Light. There's no darkness in His kingdom; there's no night there. It's one eon of sunless brilliance following another, timelessness joined to the strength to live every moment of every unending day to the fullest.

Ella planned a father's day flight to the islands, but with clouds at 300' we took a raincheck. Instead we ferried the airplane back its base in Arlington... ...through the mist......surrounded by nothing by white......no direction, no landmark, no guidance......except for a voice on the radio speaking in code and a complicated set of dashboard instruments. "This is the button you press if we have an emergency," Ella told me, pointing to a small black button on my side of the dash.

Finally flew above the lower clouds into a slot of blue, Mt. Rainier rising like an island from a misty sea, gleaming in the sun.

It's a faith-flight, being a dad--listening for guidance, keeping straight on the course when there is no evidence that you're going in the right direction, when you're not even sure what direction is right...except for the Voice saying, "This is the way walk in it."

We in the Pacific Northwest have a love-hate relationship with rain: We love what it does, but we love to complain about what it IS. It makes everything grow in green splendor. But it IS wet.

It's a proverb for life. We like knowing but not the hard work of learning, the benefits but not the process. We love grace but hate the humility required to receive it. We appreciate blessing but not the empty hands required to hold it.

Can we believe that both the process and the product are from the hand of God?